Francesca Bastagli

Poverty, inequality and public cash

transfers: lessons from Latin America

Discussion paper [or working paper, etc.]

Original citation:
Bastagli, Francesca (2010) Poverty, inequality and public cash transfers: lessons from Latin
America. Background Paper for the European Report on Development (ERD) 2010 on Social
Protection for Inclusive Development, European University Institute, Florence
This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/36840/

Available in LSE Research Online: June 2012

© 2010 The Author

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 Poverty, inequality and public cash transfers
Lessons from Latin America
DRAFT

Francesca Bastagli1
London School of Economics and Political Science

ERD Conference on
Experiences and Lessons from Social Protection Programmes across the Developing Word

Paris, 17-18 June 2010

1. Introduction

This paper analyses public cash transfers in Latin American countries, focusing on their targeting and
conditionality components. Since the mid 1990s, governments across the region adopted cash
transfers explicitly aimed at reducing poverty and at reaching population groups largely excluded
from formal social protection policies.2 In addition to being targeted, such income transfers are
commonly characterised by a conditionality component. That is, they are paid to the eligible poor,
provided they follow a pre-specified course of action.

More recently, two developments have led to lively debates regarding the policy implications that
emerge from the conditional cash transfer (CCT) experience in Latin America and specifically to the
role of targeting and conditionality in cash transfers. First, efforts to strengthen social protection and
the introduction of cash transfers in low income countries facing high institutional and financial
constraints have raised questions regarding the appropriateness of alternative targeting methods
and of including a conditionality component. Second, in countries which have implemented cash
transfers for some years, policymakers are taking stock of implications arising from the experience to

1
Research Fellow. Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London School of Economics and Political Science. Address for
correspondence: f.a.bastagli@lse.ac.uk .
2
The focus of this paper is on conditional cash transfers that explicitly pursue poverty reduction as their primary objective
and that are understood to fall under social assistance in social protection. They are non-contributory and largely financed
out of general taxation, in countries where they are nationally financed, or via donor assistance.
1
date as they consider the “fine-tuning” of CCT policy design parameters. Against this backdrop, this
paper makes two contributions.

First, it reviews the evidence available to date on the poverty and inequality impacts of CCTs, paying
close attention to the contribution of separate CCT components. The expansion of CCTs in Latin
America has rested largely on evaluations highlighting their good targeting performance and
progress achieved towards intended outcomes in terms of combined programme effects.
Remarkably little evidence however supported the arguments in favour of the adoption of specific
targeting practices and conditionality. Drawing on the experience of nine countries in Latin America,
the paper highlights the variations in cash transfer component design and implementation and
identifies the intended and unintended effects of alternative parameter design details. CCTs
reviewed by the paper include (by country and start date): Bolsa Família (Brazil, 2001/2003); Chile
Solidario-Programa Puente (Chile, 2002); Familias en Acción-FA (Colombia, 2001); Bono de
Desarrollo Humano-BDH (Ecuador, 2003); Red Solidaria (El Salvador, 2005); Programa de Asignación
Familiar-PRAF (Honduras, Phase I 1990 and Phase II 1998); PROGRESA-Oportunidades (Mexico, 1997
and 2002); Red de Protección Social-RPS (Nicaragua, 2000 and 2003) and Tekoporã (Paraguay, 2005).

Second, the paper discusses the policy implications arising from the experience of Latin American
countries by contrasting evidence on CCT component effects with the claims about their intended
outcomes and by linking design and implementation information to CCT outcomes. For example, the
adoption of cash transfers with behavioural requirements was supported by the understanding that
conditionalities would address the “intergenerational transmission of poverty” and held promise in
tackling poverty in the long-term. In the CCT experience in Latin American countries, has the
inclusion of conditionality contributed to improvements in human capital outcomes? If so, what
does the evidence suggest about the design and implementation details that have facilitated the
intended outcomes?

The paper is organised as follows. First, it identifies the central arguments in favour of and against
targeting and conditionality in poverty reduction programmes. Second, it highlights the variations in
policy parameters in the CCT experience in Latin American countries to reveal the multitude of
design and implementation options in practice. Third, it reviews the evidence on CCT poverty and
inequality outcomes in terms of income, education and health. This section reports on overall
programme impacts and on estimates, where they are available, of the effects of separate CCT

2
components. Fourth, the paper discusses the potential linkages between policy outcomes and the
design and implementation details highlighted in the previous section, arguing that identifying such
linkages is central to any informed discussion on policy. This is the paper’s main contribution to the
ERD’s 2010 analysis of policy options in strengthening social protection in less developed countries
(LDCs).

2. Targeting, conditionality and public cash transfers: A review of the arguments

The adoption of cash transfers that are targeted and conditional in Latin American countries was
largely supported by the promise such policies hold to address poverty both in the short and long
run (Britto, 2005). This perceived potential is captured by a widely cited definition of CCTs, which
also points to the purposes of their subcomponents: “The cash transfer is aimed at providing short-
term assistance to families in extreme poverty (...) while the conditionalities aim to promote longer
term human capital investments, especially among the young” (Rawlings, 2004).

CCTs were additionally supported by administrative and political economy claims. Commentators
argued that CCTs displayed a reasonably low cost (Morley and Coady, 2003; World Bank, 2004).
Furthermore, tying assistance to school attendance would make it politically possible to transfer far
larger amounts of resources from the rest of society to the poor than would be the case without
such condition (Morley and Coady, 2003).

While intuitively attractive, these claims do not in fact reflect the full range of concerns and trade-
offs associated with alternative targeting and conditionality practices. These are briefly summarised
here and are grouped around three sets of considerations: administrative, behavioural and political
economy. The empirical basis of these arguments is explored in Section 4, which critically examines
the evidence available to date on the effects of targeting and conditionality in public cash transfers,
focusing on administrative and behavioural considerations.3

Arguments in favour of targeting emphasise its potential to concentrate resources on vulnerable

groups disproportionately affected by risks that are not addressed by universal spending. Such

3
Although political economy arguments are reviewed here, evidence in support of political economy considerations is not
presented in this paper.
3
considerations have prompted policy discussions to turn to narrow targeting as a means of achieving
higher impacts on poverty (van de Walle, 1998). Yet targeting practices are also associated with
individual responses and incentive effects, administrative costs and political economy effects that
risk offsetting progress in poverty reduction.

By distinguishing between the poor or eligible and the non-poor or ineligible, targeting may generate
an incentive for individuals to modify their behaviour in order to qualify for a programme. Targeted
income transfers that display high rates of benefit withdrawal risk generating a work disincentive
and a “poverty trap”, such that people have little inducement to increase their income (Atkinson,
1995). As the review of targeting practices in the following sections highlights, in practice, targeting
design and implementation details may mitigate the risks of work disincentives associated with
narrow targeting. Governments may taper the withdrawal of benefits, so that a unit increase in
income say, above the eligibility threshold does not automatically imply loss of entitlement to the
benefit. Income transfer payment may also be set for a specific duration, independently of variations
in beneficiaries’ socioeconomic circumstances.

Targeting involves the regular identification of beneficiaries and management of beneficiary data
including its verification and reassessment over time. A government’s capacity to target benefits
depends on the information available to it and the extent to which it can verify information supplied
by others (Atkinson, 1995). Difficulties encountered by governments in assessing and verifying
claimant’s means generate administrative costs that increase with the informational demands and
complexity of the procedures of verification and recertification processes (Besley and Kanbur, 1990).
They also generate social costs including low take-up, social fragmentation and tensions that
increase with the administrative complexity of targeting (Hernanz et al, 2006).

From a political economy perspective, arguments in favour of narrow targeting underscore its
potential for securing public support for a programme by identifying population sub-groups that are
deemed to be somehow “deserving”. Yet the political economy literature points to the ways in
which narrow targeting may jeopardise public support for social programmes and hence the
redistributive budget available. Finely targeted policies leading to lower leakage to the middle
classes would draw support primarily from those below the poverty line. In contrast, universalist
schemes, by increasing the number of beneficiaries, become the interest of additional groups,

4
promote their protection and the available redistributive budget (Besley and Kanbur, 1990; Gelbach
and Pritchett, 2002; Sen, 1995).

Similarly, arguments on conditionality may be grouped around behavioural, administrative and

political economy considerations. The inclusion of conditionality in cash transfers is commonly
justified to influence beneficiary behaviour to favour outcomes deemed to be beneficial to
individuals or to society at large (Bastagli, 2008b; De Brauw and Hoddinott, 2008). For example,
conditions can address the distortion of choices that arise when myopia or information asymmetry
lead individuals to make decisions that do not take into account the mid to long term benefits of
human capital accumulation. Poor knowledge of the benefits of health care check-ups, pre-natal
treatment and other types of preventative health care might bring individuals to underutilise health
services. The inclusion of a behavioural requirement in terms of regular health care visits would
address this distortion.

Conditionality has also been motivated to address intra-household bargaining processes to

strengthen the position of individuals with weak or no bargaining power. Das et al (2004) illustrate
this case in relation to child labour, where parents favour higher income in the short-term over
potential long-term returns from increased school attendance. In such cases, the motivation for the
inclusion of school enrolment and attendance behavioural requirements for school-aged children
rests on its ability to address the differences between child and parent preferences.

At the same time, conditionality may generate high administrative costs. Conditionality
administration requires the regular collection of information regarding beneficiary behaviour, the
verification of compliance and the implementation of responses to non-compliance. These are
administratively demanding activities that may display high costs, especially where constraints on
regular information collection, transmission and management are high.

Furthermore, conditionality may act as an additional screening or targeting device when non-
compliance leads to beneficiary exclusion from programme participation. A related concern is its
potential generation of exclusion errors, whereby the eligible are excluded from the programme. If
conditions burden low income households with behavioural requirements that they are not able to
comply with, they risk screening out eligible households. The risk of exclusion as a result of non-
compliance, moreover, may disproportionately affect particular vulnerable groups. Poorer

5
households or individuals facing high opportunity costs in meeting conditions, determined by low
resources and limited access to services, may experience a higher risk of exclusion from conditional
transfers.

From a political economy perspective, advocates of conditionality emphasise its role in legitimising
cash transfers politically. According to such claims, CCTs are more acceptable to policy-makers and
tax-payers than unconditional schemes. In this view, by increasing political acceptability, conditions
would also increase the budget size and sustainability of a programme (De Janvry and Saudoulet,
2006). Yet if we consider that conditionality acts as an additional screening device, the literature on
the political economy of targeting serves as a reference and the argument is reversed as, according
to this literature, more narrowly targeted policies risk losing support from the middle classes,
leading to smaller budgets for the targeted programmes (Besley and Kanbur, 1990).

3. Conditional cash transfers: Design and implementation

Debates on public cash transfers often focus on broad design choices such as whether to target or
not, whether to condition or not. In reality, policy design options may be more subtle. Income
transfers vary by degree of targeting and targeting complexity. When they include conditions, they
vary depending on the definitions and enforcement of behavioural requirements. The comparison of
CCT targeting and conditionality parameters highlights the variety of design options available to
governments. The review of the implementation of targeting and conditionality practices provides
examples of the challenges encountered at different stages of policy administration and sheds light
on the policy determinants of CCT outcomes.

3.1 Cash transfer parameter design

All CCTs reviewed here pursue a poverty reduction objective. Yet the emphasis on how this is to be
achieved varies and shapes programme component design details. The inclusion of a transfer and
conditions suggests that all CCTs aim to reduce poverty through both immediate income support
and by promoting human capital outcomes. However, in some cases, priority is awarded to the
human capital accumulation objective. In others, the provision of a minimum income nationally is a
central concern. As will become evident over the following paragraphs, in a number of countries the

6
determination of CCT programme parameters has been characterised more by ambiguity than clarity
about main programme aims, leading to contradictions and misguided expectations regarding
potential programme impact.

The cash transfer

CCT transfer amounts as a share of beneficiary income or expenditures vary from about 20% of
beneficiary household annual expenditures in Mexico/PROGRESA and Nicaragua/RPS (Maluccio,
2003), to about 10% of beneficiaries’ monthly income in Brazil/Bolsa Familia (Bastagli, 2008a), to 6-
7% of the total income of households covered by the programme in Chile/Chile Solidario (Galasso,
2006) and 4% of beneficiary consumption in Honduras/PRAF (Flores, 2003).

The regulation of transfer amounts varies depending on whether they are subject to an adjustment
or uprating rule. Mexico’s Oportunidades is indexed to inflation (Cohen et al, 2006a). Bolsa Familia
benefit values are increased in an ad hoc fashion. Mean real income transfer values fell by 10%
between 2001 and 2005 and benefits were increased in 2007 for the first time since the introduction
of the Bolsa Familia in 2003 (Paes de Barros et al, 2009). In Honduras, during PRAF I, real transfer
values dropped by 30% and for PRAF II, values were indexed to inflation.

Transfer amounts may include phasing-out schemes. In Nicaragua, the RPS declines in value over
three years. In Chile’s Programa Puente, the bono de proteccion value falls every six months during
the two years that beneficiary families are entitled to the transfer. In Brazil, Bolsa Familia payments
are made as long as eligibility persists.

CCT participation has a maximum duration when it is set for a specified amount of time and then
withdrawn, independently of the socioeconomic circumstances of the beneficiary. Alternatively, a
CCT may include a graduation strategy that regulates the circumstances under which beneficiaries
leave the programme because of changes in their socioeconomic conditions. Chile’s Programa
Puente and Nicaragua’s RPS both have maximum duration periods (two years and three years
respectively). When there is no maximum time limit for participation, CCT regulation typically
includes a recertification or reassessment process whereby beneficiary information used to
determine eligibility is verified.

7
Targeting
CCTs are paid to broad segments of the total population in Brazil (26%) and Mexico (15%).
Conversely, CCTs are narrowly targeted to population subgroups in Chile (6% of the total
population), Colombia (5%) and Nicaragua (3%). They also vary depending on the share of the poor
population targeted. CCTs aim to reach all the extreme poor in Brazil and Mexico, all the poor with
children in Brazil or all the extreme poor with children Chile, Colombia and Nicaragua.

CCTs may rely on geographic targeting to target priority areas, whether based on welfare levels or
on other requirements such as minimum infrastructure facilities, or a combination of both. In
Colombia, Familias en Accion (FA) is implemented in poor municipalities with fewer than 100,000
inhabitants, a bank and adequate education and health infrastructure (Attanasio et al, 2005).
Similarly, in Nicaragua, RPS was initially implemented in departments that satisfied minimum
administrative and infrastructure requirements (Maluccio and Flores, 2005). Beneficiary selection
relies on proxy-means testing when, rather than relying on reported monetary income, information
on other correlates of poverty is collected to compute a welfare score used to rank potential
beneficiaries. The potential advantages of this targeting technique over relying on declared income
rest on the selection of poverty correlates that are easily verifiable, helping to avoid the problems of
income misreporting and work disincentives generated by straightforward income means tests.
Most Latin American CCTs rely on proxy-means tests. A notable exception is Brazil’s Bolsa Familia,
which relies on self-declared per capita household income.

Targeting practices also vary depending on the regulation of beneficiary reassessment or

recertification processes and the associated question of programme duration and exit or
“graduation”. In countries where programme participation is an entitlement as long as eligibility
criteria persist, CCT administration requires the regular recertification of beneficiary records. Mexico
and Brazil have set maximum time limits within which beneficiary records must be validated: every
three years and every two years respectively.

It is worth noting that these are maximum time limits, in some countries they are set as
administrative benchmarks for regulating and monitoring the performance of administrators
responsible for the management of beneficiary databases. By regulation, and despite maximum time
limits for beneficiary recertification, in some CCTs loss of eligibility as a result of changes in the
socioeconomics and demographic circumstances of beneficiaries determines termination of

8
programme participation. This is the case in Brazil, where beneficiaries are required to report
changes in their circumstances, including household composition and income. If these imply the loss
of eligibility, by design at least, Bolsa Familia beneficiaries are no longer entitled to the income
transfer. It follows that by design the Bolsa Familia generates a 100% benefit withdrawal rate
(Bastagli, 2008a).4

Conditionality
Conditionality requires beneficiaries to follow some pre-specified course of action. In the Latin
American experience, conditionalities are typically set in the areas of education and health. School-
aged children in beneficiary households are required to attend school for a minimum amount of
time in the school week. Pregnant and nursing women and young children are required to regularly
attend health clinics for check-ups and to maintain an up-to-date vaccination booklet. Some CCTs
have additional behavioural requirements, commonly targeting the mothers in beneficiary
households. PROGRESA for example, requires beneficiary mothers to attend workshops on health
and programme coordinators’ meetings and to contribute to a set amount of hours of work to the
programme (Molyneux, 2006).

Conditionality in CCTs also varies depending on the centrality it occupies in programme operation. It
is central to CCT implementation when compliance is first verified and benefit payments are only
subsequently made (Mexico). In other countries, once eligibility is determined, transfer payments
are made to beneficiaries and conditionality compliance is verified at later stages (Brazil).

Finally, mechanisms of response to non-compliance also vary. In some CCTs, non-compliance leads
directly to beneficiary suspension from programme participation. This is the case in Chile’s
Programa Puente, where bono payments are terminated if a family does not meet its commitments.
In Brazil, where a beneficiary’s failure to comply with conditionality is understood as a “flag of
additional vulnerability”, in the first instance the response to non-compliance includes verification of
the reasons for non-compliance and the beneficiary is entitled to additional support and
personalised services from the municipal authorities. Only if non-compliance persists over time for

4
Whether this programme feature occurs in practice is another matter. Section 3.2 highlights the departures between
policy design and implementation in practice.

9
five consecutive monitoring cycles and justifications for non-compliance are not provided, is benefit
payment initially suspended and eventually terminated (MDS, 2009).

3.2 Implementation

Policy implementation does not automatically follow from official policy regulation. Information on
the departures of CCT parameter administration from formal design in practice may be useful in
understanding policy performance and in the interpretation of findings of policy impact evaluations.
Variations of this kind arise from challenges encountered in policy implementation. They also result
from differences in people’s perceptions of policy parameter definitions and motivations from those
intended by policymakers and enshrined in policy legislation.

With regards to transfer-subsidy payments, early CCT assessments reveal that the supply side
payments in some countries were not executed in practice. In Honduras for example, Glewwe and
Olinto (2004) explain that despite including transfers to service providers by design, in practice PRAF
did not execute such payments and efforts to improve service provision as part of the CCT were not
implemented during the early years of PRAF implementation.

In the implementation of CCT targeting, the management of CCT beneficiary information, including
the regular verification and updating of beneficiary records, has encountered challenges that have
led to a gradual implementation of programme rules in many countries. For example, in Mexico’s
PROGRESA, by design the eligibility status of households was supposed to be reviewed within three
years after a household’s entry into the programme. In fact, more than five years elapsed before any
effort was made to revise the list of beneficiaries (Skoufias and Di Maro, 2007). In Brazil, 21% of
beneficiary records in the national Cadastro Unico registry used for the identification of Bolsa Familia
beneficiaries were “valid” in 2005, that is, contained information which had been recently verified
and updated.5 The share of valid Cadastro Unico records has since increased and reached 85% in
2008 (MDS, 2009).

Studies of the implementation of CCT targeting practices also highlight the mixed levels of
understanding of the eligibility requirements among benefit claimants and local administrators.

5
Note that the national Cadastro Unico was operationalised in 2001 and that the Bolsa Familia reform was launched at the
end of 2003.
10
Findings from a qualitative study of RPS implementation in Nicaragua, reveals that targeting was a
poorly-understood element of the programme: “...in particular, very few people understood the
basis for the household targeting and why they were included or excluded” (Adato, 2008). Similarly,
limited understanding and confusion regarding CCT eligibility criteria among the public are reported
in El Salvador, Paraguay and Brazil during the early years of programme implementation (Veras
Soares and Britto, 2007; Bastagli, 2008a).

People’s perceptions of the definitions and motivation for conditionality vary from official
conditionality regulation. In Brazil, interviews with teachers reveal the widespread practice for
absent beneficiary children to be marked as present (Bastagli, 2008a). Teachers explained their
reluctance to additionally penalise poor children, revealing that their understanding of Bolsa Familia
conditionality differs substantially from the official regulation of conditions in Brazil.6

The monitoring of conditionalities, involving the regular collection and transmission of information
on beneficiary behaviour, has not been consistently implemented as outlined by programme
regulation. In Paraguay, where the Tekopora programme was introduced in 2005, conditionality
monitoring remained broadly not implemented in 2007 (Veras Soares and Britto, 2007). In Brazil,
administrative records of health conditionality compliance were first drawn together in 2005 and
reported 6% of Bolsa Familia beneficiaries with health monitoring records (not necessarily
complying). In 2009, health conditionality compliance records covered 63% of Bolsa Familia
beneficiaries (MDS, 2009).

The gradual and irregular implementation of conditionality monitoring has had implications for the
execution of the procedures of repercussion to non-compliance, the first being a necessary
prerequisite for the second. In practice, responses to non-compliance in some countries were not
implemented or were only gradually administered as regular monitoring was stepped up. In Brazil,
the first cancellation of Bolsa Familia benefits as a result of conditionality non-compliance took place
in 2007 (MDS, 2009).

6
This has led to initiatives funded by the central government and with support from state level authorities in the form of
special training sessions for teachers and staff at municipal secretariats to inform them of the purpose for the education
conditionality, emphasising the non-sanctionary nature of non-compliance, at least in the first episodes of non-compliance.
11
4. The impact of cash transfers on income poverty and inequality, education and health

4.1 CCT impact: Combined effects

The implementation of CCTs in Latin American countries has partially offset the historical
“truncation” of public transfers in the region, by reaching low income groups previously excluded
from formal social protection spending (Lindert et al, 2006).7 Compared with the incidence of other
targeted transfers, CCTs are among the most progressive programmes. Coady et al (2004) compare
targeted interventions in forty-eight countries and find that most CCTs in the sample rank in the top
programmes in terms of targeting outcomes.

However, despite coverage and distributional patterns that favour the poor, small unit subsidies
limit the poverty and inequality impacts of CCTs. In some countries, CCT impacts on poverty are
lower than those achieved by targeted social insurance transfers with relatively higher unit subsidies
(Lindert et al, 2006). In many cases, and as a result of both benefit levels and the definition of the
target population, CCTs have proved to be quite successful at reducing the poverty gap or the
severity of poverty, but have limited or negligible impact on the headcount ratio (Skoufias et al,
2001).

Numerous studies highlight the contribution of CCTs to income poverty and inequality reduction
despite accounting for a relatively small shares of national GDP. In Brazil, the Bolsa Familia is the
most progressive income source (Soares et al, 2006) and contributed to a reduction of the poverty
gap of 12% (Bastagli, 2008a) and of inequality measured in terms of the Gini coefficient of 10%
between 2001 and 2005 (Paes de Barros et al, 2009 ) while accounting for 0.35% of GDP. In Mexico,
PROGRESA/Oportunidades reduced the poverty gap in rural areas by 19% and accounts for 18%
(close to one fifth) of the post-transfers decline in the Gini coefficient between 1996 and 2006
(Esquivel et al, 2009), despite accounting for 0.36% of GDP. In Nicaragua, the RPS reduced the
poverty gap among beneficiaries by 18% (Maluccio and Flores, 2005), while costing approximately
0.2% of GDP.

7
Lindert et al (2006) compare the distribution of public cash transfers in eight Latin American countries. They “net out”
average payroll contributions from the social insurance transfers to assess the redistributive impact of the “pure” public
transfer from social insurance, the part financed by general revenues not direct contributions.
12
Beyond income poverty and inequality, what do we know about CCT impacts on education and
health indicators? Studies show that in some countries CCTs have improved intermediate education
and health indicators in terms of service utilisation. Results on outcomes are more mixed and
limited, with evidence available mainly for one country, Mexico (e.g. see Behrman et al, 2005).

CCTs have been successful in increasing rates of school enrolment and attendance and in reducing
dropout rates. In Mexico, PROGRESA led to increases in enrolment in secondary school, reductions in
repetition and dropout rates in primary and secondary school and years of schooling completed
(Parker et al, 2008). In Nicaragua, Maluccio and Flores (2005) estimate that RPS led to an increase in
school enrolment of 13 percentage points. Impacts on school enrolment in both countries are
higher for poorer children, suggesting that CCTs help reduce inequalities, beyond income measures.
However, there is no evidence of significant CCT effects on learning. For Mexico, Behrman et al
(2005) show that longer exposure to PROGRESA/Oportunidades has a positive impact on grades of
schooling attained, but no effects on achievement tests.

CCTs have led to improvements in health care service use. Studies reveal positive effects on use of
preventive infant care, checkups during pregnancy, after birth and in early childhood. In Nicaragua,
the probability for a poor child to be taken to health checkups and weighed in the last six months
increased by 13 percentage points as a result of the RPS (Maluccio and Flores, 2005). In Colombia,
the percentage of children less than 24 months old with an up-to-date schedule of healthcare visits
increased from 17% to 40% as a result of the FA (Attanasio et al, 2005) and in Honduras, PRAF
increased the proportion of children who had at least one preventive health visit (over the past 30
days) by 20 percentage points (Morris et al, 2004).

Evidence of CCT impact on health outcomes is mixed. In Colombia, the Familias en Accion improved
child nutrition as measured by height-for-age (Attanasio et al, 2005). Mexico’s PROGRESA and
Nicaragua’s RPS are also associated with improvements in child height. RPS in particular, recorded a
powerful impact in terms of improving preschooler height and led to reductions in stunting and in
the prevalence of children underweight (Maluccio and Flores, 2005). However, both PRAF in
Honduras and the Bolsa Alimentacao in Brazil (one of the cash transfers consolidated into the Bolsa
Familia in 2003), had no meaningful effects on preschool nutritional status, blood haemoglobin
levels and rates of anemia (Hoddinott and Basset, 2008).

13
4.2 CCT impact: The contribution of separate CCT components and component costs

As governments approach the question of which policy parameters to select in the adoption of a
cash transfer or how to “fine-tune” existing transfers, information on the contribution of specific
parameters and of their design details is critical. What do we know about the effects of specific CCT
components? The results reported in the previous section assess the combined effects of all CCT
programme components, providing limited indications of what aspects of CCTs facilitate progress
towards target outcomes. The following paragraphs review the evidence on the effects of separate
CCT components and include a discussion of the costs associated with targeting and conditionality
(including administrative costs and unintended behavioural effects identified in Section 2).

The incidence analysis of CCTs, as reported earlier, underscores their good targeting performance.
Even though incidence outcomes depend on a variety of targeting features (including coverage rates
and characteristics of the target population) and cannot be exclusively attributed to the targeting
mechanism used, a comparison of different CCTs suggests that different beneficiary selection
mechanisms may work equally well in terms of ensuring resources are concentrated on the target
population. For example, the Bolsa Familia, which relies on self-declared income for the selection of
beneficiaries, performs as well as the best-performing CCT in terms of targeting, Chile’s Programa
Puente, which employs a proxy-means test like most CCTs (Bastagli, 2008a).

Section 2 highlighted the concern raised by targeting theory for targeted income transfers to
generate an incentive for individuals to maintain low incomes, offsetting poverty reduction efforts.
In the experience of Latin American countries, is CCT participation associated with reduced work
effort among adults? Empirical investigations using data for Mexico and Brazil indicate that CCT
programme participation in these countries is not significantly associated with adult labour supply
decisions. Skoufias and Di Maro (2007) study whether PROGRESA/Oportunidades affects adult
participation in the labour market and adult leisure time (over the years 1997-1999) and find that
programme participation does not have any significant effect on either outcome. Foguel and de
Barros (2010) estimate the effects of CCT participation on male and female adult participation rates
and number of hours worked (over the years 2001-2005) and find that Brazilian CCT programmes do
not have significant effects on either labour market participation or the supply of hours of men and
women.

14
Evidence for Nicaragua’s RPS, on the other hand, reveals that CCT participation is associated with
reduced adult work effort in the first years of programme implementation. Maluccio (2007) finds
negative effects on labour supply of RPS beneficiary households in 2001 and 2002. His study
however also finds no significant effects on numbers of hours worked in 2004 and suggests that a
reduction in transfers for those entering the programme in 2004, compared to transfer values in the
initial period of RPS implementation, may have reduced the labour supply disincentive.

Targeting also entails administrative costs. These reflect targeting design and vary over time, as
programmes encounter particular challenges or reach stages of maturity. In Mexico’s PROGRESA,
the identification of beneficiaries accounts for a high share of programme operational costs in the
early years of CCT implementation (34% compared with delivery of transfers, equal to 22% and
conditionality, 18%). Activity cost shares change over time as conditionality monitoring and
enforcement activities are stepped up and in 2000 the identification of beneficiaries accounts for 3%
of total PROGRESA operational costs, while conditionality activities amount to 24% (Caldes et al,
2004).8

Trends in CCT activity costs also highlight operational challenges encountered in programme
implementation. This is the case for PRAF in Honduras.9 The administrative cost of identifying PRAF
beneficiaries in 1999 amounted to 26% of total programme costs (excluding transfers) and
maintained similar levels, at 25% of programme costs, in 2002. Difficulties with the transition to a
new programme team and maintaining and updating beneficiary registration lists, Caldes et al (2004)
explain, lie behind these trends in programme costs.

In addition to economic costs, targeting may lead to social costs in the form of deepening social
divisions. Numerous studies document the types and extent of social costs resulting from CCT
targeting implementation in Latin American countries. Adato’s (2000) study of Mexico’s PROGRESA

8
Total administrative costs as a share of the total CCT budget over the time periods indicated here amount to: 9.6% for
PROGRESA (1997-2000), 33% for PRAF (1999-2000) and 40% for RPS (2000-2002), 40% (Caldes et al, 2004). Note: For Caldes
et al (2004) total CCT costs are given by the sum of transfers, total in-kind expenditures and total operational costs.
Operational costs include the following CCT activities-components in analysing CCT costs: programme design and
implementation, identification of beneficiaries (collecting, processing, validating and analysing household socioeconomic
data), incorporation of beneficiaries, delivery of demand transfers, delivery of supply transfers, conditionality (distributing,
collecting and processing the registration, attendance and performance forms to schools and health-care providers),
monitoring and evaluation, external evaluation.
9
For both Honduras’ PRAF and Nicaragua’s RPS, it is worth noting that the largest share of programme costs was spent on
the external evaluation: up to 35% of total costs (excluding transfers) for PRAF and 22% for RPS (Caldes et al, 2004).
15
for example highlights the tensions arising from its targeting mechanism in the form of unease and
resentment resulting from the distinction between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries.

With regards to conditionality, two recent CCT impact evaluations estimate conditionality effects on
education. Schady and Araujo’s (2008) study of Ecuador’s Bono de Desarollo Humano (BDH) exploits
variations in households’ perceptions of conditionality to assess the impact of conditionality on
school enrolment. The study compares ‘conditioned’ households, which believed there was an
enrolment requirement even though no requirements were ever monitored or enforced, with
‘unconditioned’ households, which did not believe the transfer to be conditioned. It finds that
significant (and limited) programme effects on enrolment are only recorded among households who
believed there was an enrolment requirement, suggesting that the unenforced BDH schooling
requirement has a potential causal effect on outcomes.

De Brauw and Hoddinott’s (2007) study on Mexico’s PROGRESA also exploits variations in
conditionality implementation and perceptions to analyse conditionality effects on school
enrolment. They group households according to whether they received school enrolment and
attendance monitoring forms and to their knowledge of the conditionality. The evaluation shows
that the absence of monitoring forms reduced the likelihood of children attending school, pointing
to a linkage between conditionality monitoring and school attendance.

Both studies interestingly reveal that information-sharing associated with conditionality

implementation (i.e. people’s perception or understanding that transfer receipt is conditional on
sending children to school) and initial conditionality monitoring activities (e.g. through the
distribution of monitoring forms) are associated with higher school enrolment and attendance.

The inclusion of conditionality in cash transfers has raised concerns regarding risks of exclusion and
additional penalisation of vulnerable groups. Poor households facing high opportunity costs in
meeting conditions may experience a higher risk of exclusion from the programme. In their study of
beneficiaries that left Mexico’s PROGRESA as a result of non-compliance with conditions, Alvarez et
al (2006) find that indigenous populations and the extreme poor in communities where there is likely
to be greater inequality have higher odds of dropping out of the programme. Other studies still,
have drawn attention to the ways in which conditionality imposes burdens disproportionately

16
among household members, with additional responsibilities falling mainly to mothers (Gonzalez de
la Rocha, 2005; Molyneux, 2006).

Finally, conditionality costs also arise from people’s (mis)perceptions of the definitions and purpose
of conditionality and the related unintended behavioural effects. In Nicaragua, one of the conditions
during the first phase of the RPS required children to gain weight. If they fell twice below an
established weight gain, parents could be sanctioned by suspension of benefits. Adato (2008)
reports how this requirement led to overfeeding children before they were weighed. In education,
the RPS conditionality requiring pupils to pass their grade successfully led some schools to advance
children to the next grade even when such a move was not merited (Maluccio, 2003).

In sum, this section finds that both the economic and non-economic costs associated with targeting
and conditionality deserve serious consideration in decisions regarding targeting strategies and
conditionality design. Even if a study does, say, detect a statistically significant impact of
conditionality on an intended outcome (e.g. on school enrolment), policymakers would need to
weigh these benefits against the administrative and social costs of conditionality monitoring and
enforcement. Debates on alternative parameter options will benefit from the examination of a
broad set of variables beyond those commonly cited – either because they relate directly to
intended programme outcomes or because they are easily measurable with available data.10

5. Conclusion: Linking CCT design, implementation and outcomes

Designing a public cash transfer involves many decisions. These include setting transfer levels,
identifying beneficiary selection strategies and deciding whether to condition or not and the nature
of conditionalities. As governments approach the question of which policy parameters to select
when designing a new cash transfer and how to fine-tune existing transfers, information about the
parameter design options available, the contribution of specific CCT parameters to outcomes, and
the implementation details that facilitate these linkages is critical. The following paragraphs

10
It may difficult to conduct a unified cost-benefit analysis of a programme precisely because of the inability to attach
monetary valuations to certain policy outcomes. This should not prevent a discussion on alternative costs and benefits of a
programme in the context of both policy design and assessment phases.

17
summarise the policy considerations that arise from the Latin American experience reviewed here,
grouped around two sets of considerations, the broad design of policy and institutions and the
details of CCT parameter design.

5.1 Cash transfer objectives and institutions

The design of public cash transfer parameters involves a careful balancing of competing policy
priorities and objectives. Governments may have a priority concern for guaranteeing a minimum
income or for promoting education and health outcomes, or both. Policy design decisions will also
include a balancing of these objectives against others such as the containment of programme costs
and the avoidance of disincentives. Policy parameter details are typically the result of a compromise
between different objectives, within the context of specific financial and institutional constraints.
When this compromise is not discussed explicitly, decisions may lead to ambiguity and
contradictions in programme design.

In the Latin American experience, lack of clarity regarding CCT objectives in some cases has
contributed to contradictions in programme design and misguided expectations regarding potential
outcomes. Such tensions are often compounded by the high financial and institutional constraints
faced in some countries (Veras Soares and Britto, 2008). An initial consideration that arises from the
Latin American experience then is that from the outset it is useful for governments to clarify the
primary objectives pursued by a cash transfer. Clarification could be achieved around whether the
central programme motivation is to provide an income to the poor and/or to promote human capital
accumulation. While CCT parameter details may be defined to pursue both objectives, some CCTs
emphasise one aim over the other and this has implications in terms of the groups targeted,
programme duration and time limits.

A second institutional dimension along which the CCT experience in Latin American countries varies
concerns the broad regulation of CCT and of the role of actors involved in programme
implementation. In some cases, the introduction of a CCT has been accompanied by an explicit effort
to rationalise social assistance and poverty reduction strategies by identifying priority objectives of
alternative programmes and designing the CCT within the broader policy framework, even in
countries with a weak tradition in formal social protection provision. Examples include the
consolidation of programmes, the integration of administrative registries for beneficiary selection

18
and the standardisation and simplification of policy rules. Where CCTs have been set up with limited
coordination with existing structures and practices, they have in some cases led to overlaps and
duplications in policy efforts and to tensions between actors.

In Nicaragua, for example, Moore (2009) reports of persisting tensions between Ministry of Health
staff and the private health providers responsible for providing services to RPS beneficiaries.11
Tensions were compounded by the fact that the private providers earned higher salaries than the
ministerial staff. Institutional frictions also arose from the regulation of RPS programme
coordination responsibilities. These were initially executed by a special body, the Fondo Social
Suplementario. Attempts to integrate RPS into the country’s broader social protection system, by
transferring coordination responsibilities to the Ministry of the Family, during the programme’s
second phase in late 2002 met with resistance (Moore, 2009).

Efforts to stimulate cooperation and communication between institutions involved in CCT

implementation have included terms of agreements between actors and government subsidies to
programme administrators, including performance-based administrative transfers. In Brazil, terms of
agreements specifying institutional responsibilities and promoting collaboration and information
sharing are signed by government offices and other bodies involved in different stages of Bolsa
Familia implementation (Bastagli, 2008a; Lindert et al, 2006). Furthermore, to support Bolsa Familia
administration activities and to compensate for additional costs arising from such responsibilities in
Brazil the federal government pays administrative subsidies to local authorities. Subsidy values are
based on needs assessments and are performance-based. An early assessment of these subsidies
suggests they are leading to a “catching up” effect among poorer municipalities (Bastagli, 2008a).

Finally, CCTs vary depending on their financing arrangements. The availability of external financing
has been crucial in initiating safety net measures, particularly in countries with weak public finances.
It has helped legitimise programmes and has supported CCT monitoring and evaluation. Yet
complete reliance on external financing that is guaranteed for limited periods and is subject to
renegotiation has additional implications for CCT continuity. In some countries, it is associated with
weak national ownership and this in turn has shaped programme development. In Nicaragua for

11
Public health services capacity had been deemed insufficient to respond to the additional health service demand
generated by programme beneficiaries and RPS relied on private health service providers.

19
example, the widespread perception that RPS was largely donor driven and a pervasive sense of
weak national ownership contributed to its gradual dismantling and the CCT has been discontinued
(Moore, 2009).

As is true of other institutional considerations, with regards to policy financing, the CCT experience
in Latin American countries highlights the importance of adopting a medium to long-term vision and
prioritising institutional development. Where efforts to set up social assistance measures in Latin
American countries (including CCTs) have been characterised by a short-term and emergency-based
approach, developments led, in the first instance, to interventions with a limited lifespan, the
establishment of parallel institutions and the complete reliance on external financing. The central
challenge in these countries is the development of adequate fiscal and social protection financing
arrangements for national social policy.

5.2 The determination of cash transfer policy parameters

In terms of specific CCT parameter design, the theory and evidence reviewed above highlight the
design options, the trade-offs between alternative features and the decisions made in a number of
countries in Latin America in response to varying policy priorities and concerns arising from policy
implementation.

With regards to the determination of the income transfer level, higher benefit values are associated
with higher poverty impacts. At the same time, the relatively low transfer values of CCTs, compared
with those of other public cash transfers, have been credited for minimising negative labour supply
effects that would offset the reduction in income poverty. Risks of dependency and reduced work
effort have also been addressed in some CCTs through the adoption of maximum time limits for
programme participation.

Governments face another trade-off when deciding on whether to introduce participation time
limits. When human capital accumulation is stated as a primary policy objective and CCTs have a
maximum duration of say three years, as was the case in Colombia and Nicaragua, participation is
permitted for a period well below children’s education and health cycles. This leads to an inherent
contradiction between policy objectives and design by severely limiting the potential for a cash
transfer to promote human capital outcomes.

20
In practice, in several Latin American countries, cash transfer design details were modified over time
in response to growing awareness of the tensions around cash transfer regulation and programme
objectives. For example, in a number of countries that initially failed to uprate or revise cash transfer
values over time, leading to the erosion of their real value and limiting their poverty reduction and
redistributive impact, benefit uprating practices were introduced (e.g. Honduras). In countries where
cash transfers were introduced with maximum time limits while pursuing human capital
accumulation objectives, duration periods were revised and extended to better reflect programme
priorities (e.g. in Colombia).

In some countries CCT implementation has proceeded in tandem with the reorganisation of
targeting tools, leading to the consolidation of beneficiary registries and to the standardisation of
eligibility rules nationally. These reforms have led to administrative simplification and in some cases
are associated with reductions of CCT administrative costs. Trends in CCT administrative cost
estimates for Brazil and Mexico for example show the progressive reduction of total costs and of
activity share costs, with targeting costs declining over time. In Mexico, PROGRESA/Oportunidades
administrative costs declined from 57% of total outlays in 1997 (Caldes et al, 2004) to 6% in 2003
(Lindert et al, 2006). Brazil’s CCT administrative costs declined from 14.7% (pre-reform CCTs) to 5.3%
(Lindert et al, 2006).

Beneficiary identification methods vary depending on informational requirements and these in turn
are associated with varying administrative and social costs. In the experience of CCTs reviewed here,
mechanisms relying on simpler requirements have proved to work as well, in terms of targeting
performance, as more complex targeting procedures. The standardisation and simplification of
programme rules also holds potential for minimising social tensions and fragmentation by
guaranteeing common procedures nationally. These results reinforce some of the advantages of
simple targeting practices.

Contrary to what targeting theory predicts, in some countries, evidence points to the absence of a
clear work disincentive effect associated with CCT participation, even where by design the transfer
generates a high marginal tax rate. Difficulties encountered in the regular re-evaluation of
beneficiaries (see Section 3) may have contributed to this result by generating a “fuzzy”
implementation of targeting, whereby in practice, changes in the socioeconomic circumstances of
beneficiaries are not immediately recorded and do not automatically lead to the suspension of

21
benefit payments even when eligibility levels are surpassed. As means testing is stepped up as a
result of the closer implementation of programme targeting design over time, whether these results
hold remains an open question. The potential negative incentive effects warrant a re-examination as
means testing and eligibility rules are more strictly enforced.

In a number of Latin American countries, the definition of conditionality in cash transfers has been
revised to take unintended behavioural effects into account. In Nicaragua for example, RPS
conditionality requiring beneficiary children to successfully pass their grades was suspended once it
was observed that this condition was associated with schoolteachers promoting beneficiary children
to secure their benefit receipt (Maluccio and Flores, 2005). Concerns that conditionality may
additionally penalise vulnerable households have led to the adoption of features aimed at
minimising its sanctionary nature towards beneficiaries. These include processes of verification of
the reasons for non compliance and initiatives to assist beneficiaries in complying with behavioural
requirements.

Evidence of the partial implementation of conditionality in practice (i.e. irregular or no monitoring of

compliance and failure to implement responses to non-compliance, see Section 3), coupled with the
positive impact of CCTs on the use of services, suggests that communicating the desired behaviour in
terms of school attendance and health care visits to the public at large contributes to the intended
behavioural effects, independently of the full implementation of conditionality, at least during the
early years of policy implementation.

Evidence of impact on education and health outcomes remains mixed and points to the importance
of government commitment to improving service quality. Results available for Mexico’s PROGRESA-
Oportunidades for example show that longer exposure to school has no effect on achievement test
scores (Behrman et al, 2005). An initial test of links between school characteristics, measured in
terms of student/teacher ratios and educational outcomes measured in terms of grades of schooling
attainment finds that impacts differ with the quality of schooling available (Behrman et al, 2005).

In the area of health too, limited results on outcomes are associated with weak service provision and
quality. Hoddinott and Basset (2008) hypothesise for example that shortages and incomplete

22
deliveries of iron supplements in Honduras help explain the absence of PRAF impact on rates of
anemia (see Section 4).

The Latin American CCT examples indicate that the potential for CCTs to promote human capital
outcomes may be usefully aided by supply-side interventions aimed at improving service provision
and quality. A government’s commitment to improved services may be an essential ingredient for
cash transfers and conditionality to function as intended.

23
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